1. Moral Developments and Moral Reasoning

2. This section investigates how we examine our own moral standards and apply them to concrete situations and issues.
It first looks at the process of moral development itself.

3. Stages of Moral Development
Lawrence Kohlberg identified six stages of moral development:
Level One: Pre-conventional Stages
Punishment and Obedience Orientation - At this stage, the physical consequences of an act wholly determine the goodness or badness of that act.

4. Level One: Pre-conventional Stages
The child's reasons for doing the right thing are to avoid punishment or defer to the superior physical power of authorities. There is little awareness that others have needs similar to one’s own.

5. Instrument and Relativity Orientation-
At this stage, right actions become those that can serve as instruments for satisfying the child’s own needs or the needs of those for whom the child cares.

6. At these two stages, the child is able to respond to rules and social expectations and can apply the labels good, bad, right, and wrong .
Right and wrong are interpreted in terms of the pleasant or painful consequences of actions or in terms of the physical power of those who set the rules.

7. Level Two: Conventional Stages
Maintaining the expectations of one's own family, peer group, or nation is now seen as valuable in its own right, regardless of the consequences.
Interpersonal Concordance Orientation - Good behavior at this early conventional stage is living to the expectations of those for whom one feels loyalty, affection, and trust, such as family and friends. Right action is conformity to what is generally expected in one's role as a good son, daughter, brother, friend, and so on.

8. Law and Order Orientation - Right and wrong at this more mature conventional stage now come to be determined by loyalty to one's own larger nation or surrounding society. Laws are to be upheld except where they conflict with other fixed social duties.

9. Level Three: Post-conventional, Autonomous, or Principled Stages
Social Contract Orientation - At this first post-conventional stage, the person becomes aware that people hold a variety of conflicting personal views and opinions and emphasizes fair ways of reaching consensus by agreement, contract, and due process.

10. Universal Ethical Principles Orientation - At this final stage, right action comes to be defined in terms of moral principles chosen because of their logical comprehensiveness, universality, and consistency.

11. At these stages, the person no longer simply accepts the values and norms of the groups to which he or she belongs. The person questions the laws and values that society has adopted and redefines them in terms of self-chosen moral principles that can be justified in rational terms.

12. Kohlberg's own research found that many people remain stuck at an early stage of moral development. His structure implies that later stages are better than the earlier ones. Kohlberg has been criticized for this implication, and for not offering any argument to back it up.

13. Carol Gilligan, a feminist psychologist, has also criticized Kohlberg's theory on the grounds that it describes male and not female patterns of moral development. Gilligan claims that there is a "female" approach to moral issues that Kohlberg ignores.